The Millions Top Ten: July 2017

Related Books:

We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for July.

Otessa Moshfegh learned Icarus’s lesson this month. A few weeks ago, she boasted not one but two titles on our Top Ten list – a feat that had never before been accomplished. But come July? Nada. How quickly things change. One month, you’re 1/5 of our list; the next month, one of your books has graduated to our Hall of Fame and another has dropped out of the running entirely.

Meanwhile, much of this month’s list remains unchanged. The books in the first six positions didn’t budge. Instead, three newcomers entered our ranks in the seventh, eighth, and tenth slots.

Mohsin Hamid’sExit West is one of those new books. “Tracing the fissures in human community and global space, and reflecting on the possibility of their transcendence,” wrote Eli Jelly-Schapiro in his review for our site, the book “maps the divides that structure the current global order.”

Next, in seventh position, we welcome What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons. In our recently published Great Second-Half 2017 Book Preview, our own Claire Cameron observed that “the buzz around this debut is more like a roar,” and based on the book’s immediate ascendance onto our list, that seems accurate.

Finally, Elif Batuman’sThe Idiot fills tenth position in this month’s list. To that development, Millions staffers would likely say: about time. Having earned not one, but two full-length reviews for our site, The Idiot has been lauded for the way its “layered truths and fictions…compounded so that everything in the novel became true and real in a deep, shining way that cannot be achieved through essays.” (It’s also been examined in the context of sexual power dynamics.)

Next month, we can expect to see at least three openings on our Top Ten, and likely considerably more as the long tail of the Book Preview does its job.

We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for July.
This
Month
Last
Month
Title
On List
1.
3.
Taipei
2 months
2.
4.
Stand on Zanzibar
5 months
3.
5.
The Middlesteins
5 months
4.
7.
The Orphan Master's Son
3 months
5.
8.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
5 months
6.
-
The Interestings
1 month
7.
9.
Vampires in the Lemon Grove
4 months
8.
-
Visitation Street
1 month
9.
-
The Pioneer Detectives
1 month
10.
-
Fox 8
1 month
Big changes on our list this month as four titles graduate to our illustrious Hall of Fame. Let's run through new Hall of Famers quickly:
Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever: As many of our readers are already aware, staff writer Mark O'Connell's shorter-format ebook was The Millions' first foray into ebook publishing. We have been thrilled by the great reader response. And, if you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, why not mark its graduation to the Hall of Fame by checking out this special, little book (for only $1.99!)
Tenth of December: 2013 opened with the book world agog over George Saunders' newest collection. He famously graced the cover of the New York Times Magazine under the banner "Greatest Human Ever in the History of Ever" (or something like that) and the book figured very prominently in our first-half preview. Unsurprisingly, all the hype helped drive a lot of sales. It also led our own Elizabeth Minkel to reflect on Saunders and the question of greatness in a thoughtful essay.
Building Stories: Chris Ware has reached the point in his career (legions of fans, museum shows) where he can do whatever he wants. And what he wanted to do was produce a "book" the likes of which we hadn't seen before, a box of scattered narratives to be delved into any which way the reader wanted, all shot through with Ware's signature style and melancholy. Ware appeared in our Year in Reading last year with an unlikely selection. Mark O'Connell called Building Stories "a rare gift."
Arcadia: Lauren Groff is another Millions favorite, though it took a bit longer for her book, first released in March 2012, to make our list. Our own Edan Lepucki interviewed Groff soon after the book's release, and Groff later participated in our Year in Reading, discussing her "year of savage, brilliant, and vastly underrated female writers."
That leaves room, then, for four debuts on this month's list:
The Interestings: Though Meg Wolitzer is already a well-known, bestselling author, her big novel seems to be on the slow burn trajectory to breakout status, with the word-of-mouth wave (at least in the part of the world that I frequent), building month by month. That word of mouth was perhaps helped along the way by Edan Lepucki's rollicking review, in which, among other things, she posited what it means for a "big literary book" to be written by someone other than a "big literary man."
Visitation Street: Ivy Pochoda's new thriller featured prominently in our latest preview and carries the imprimatur of Dennis Lehane. That seems to have been enough to land the book on our list.
The Pioneer Detectives: As one Millions Original graduates from our list, another arrives. The Pioneer Detectives, which debuted in the second half of July, is an ambitious work of page-turning reportage, the kind of journalism we all crave but that can often be hard to find. Filled with brilliant insights into how scientific discoveries are made and expertly edited by our own Garth Hallberg, The Pioneer Detectives is a bargain at $2.99. We hope you'll pick it up.
Fox 8: And as one George Saunders work graduates from our list, another arrives. This one is an uncollected story, sold as an e-single.
Meanwhile, Tao Lin's Taipei easily slides into our top spot. For more on the book's unlikely success in our Top Ten, don't miss my commentary for last month's list.
Near Misses: They Don't Dance Much, Speedboat, My Struggle: Book 1, The Flamethrowers and Life After Life. See Also: Last month's list.

We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for March.
This Month
Last Month
Title
On List
1.
1.
Norwegian by Night
4 months
2.
3.
Lincoln in the Bardo
2 months
3.
2.
The Trespasser
6 months
4.
4.
Moonglow
5 months
5.
8.
A Separation
2 months
6.
5.
The North Water
4 months
7.
6.
Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living
2 months
8.
10.
Homesick for Another World
3 months
9.
7.
Commonwealth
6 months
10.
-
Swing Time
2 months
News broke recently that Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad will be adapted for the screen by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, and it's hard to say what Whitehead's going to celebrate more: that wonderful development, or the fact that his novel, after a six-month run on our Top Ten list, has at last graduated to our site's hallowed Hall of Fame. Regardless, it can be said that good news seldom comes alone.
Filling the open spot on our list is Zadie Smith, whose latest novel, Swing Time, returns to our list after a three-month absence. (It first cracked the rankings in December.) At this pace, look for Smith, who's previously reached our Hall of Fame four years ago with NW, to send her second work there in March 2018.
Elsewhere on the list, several titles swapped positions, and George Saunders's Lincoln In the Bardo overtook Tana French's The Trespasser to claim second place. On our site this week, Millions staffer Jacob Lambert penned a simultaneously hysterical and haunting "modern" adaptation of Saunders's first novel, featuring a lumbering, slovenly beast by now familiar to us all:
Even in the gloom, his skin held an unhealthy rusty glow; his hair, if one might call it that, had an aspect of spun sugar, though it did not appetize.
Meanwhile, Manjula Martin's Scratch anthology - which chronicles the ways writers do and do not make money from their craft -- held fast in the middle of our list. Millions editor Lydia Kiesling caught up with Martin last week to discuss the way the book came to be, the struggles of trying to make a living from writing, and how writers, editors, and publishers alike feel about the same:
On the one hand I’m like yeah, people who do work should be paid. On the other hand…there is a way in which artistic value cannot be quantified. These two things can be true at the same time. But I think where things become far less ambivalent is when it comes to writing for publications and companies that make a lot of money off your work while you’re not making money off your work.
Skulking just beyond our Top Ten ranks this month are two particularly notable titles: Ill Will by Dan Chaon, who was recently interviewed by Edan Lepucki; and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, which made it to the Championship Round of the Tournament of Books. Will either break into the rankings of our list next time? Well, there's only one way to find out.
This month's other near misses included: Here I Am, Version Control, and The Nix. See Also: Last month's list.